Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE). USAGE NOTE: Use this tag only for questions about the Xcode IDE itself, and not for general Mac or iOS programming topics. Use [cocoa] for Mac programming questions, and [cocoa-touch] or [iOS] or [Swift] for iOS programming questions.
Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) tool, which runs on macos. It is used for creating apps for macOS (macos), iOS (ios), iPadOS (ipados),watchOS (watchos) visionOS (visionos) and tvOS (tvos) platforms.
This tag should be used only for questions about the Xcode IDE itself, not for programming questions for which you happen to be using Xcode - if your question would stay the same if you used nano and make for writing your program, avoid adding this tag.
For macOS programming questions, use the macos or cocoa tag.
For iOS programming questions, use the ios or cocoa-touch tags.
For Apple Watch programming questions, use the watchkit, watchos or watch-os2 tags.
For questions about the Objective-C language and its features, use the objective-c tag.
For questions about the Swift language and its features, use the swift tag.
Latest Versions:
- Beta cycle started with Xcode 26.1 Beta (17B5025f) released on September 22, 2025
- Current Version is Xcode 26.0.1 (17A400) released on September 22, 2025
- N-1 stable Version is Xcode 16.4 (16F6) released on May 28, 2025
Release notes:
SDKs in Xcode 26
- iOS 26
- iPadOS 26
- tvOS 26
- watchOS 26
- macOS 26
- visionOS 26
SDKs in Xcode 16
- iOS 18
- iPadOS 18
- tvOS 18
- watchOS 11
- macOS 15
- visionOS 2
This tag covers:
- Project organization
- Source code editing
- Build system
- Unit testing
- Xcode Instruments
- Interface Builder (prior to Xcode 4, Interface Builder was a separate app, in which case you would use the interface-builder tag)
More information:
- Official Xcode Site
- Official Xcode Help
- Xcode Wikipedia Article
- Apple Developer - Downloads
- Apple Developer - All Downloads (New and Old Releases and Tools)
- Verify Xcode Installer checksum
Related:
idecocoacocoa-touchmacosioswatchostvosobjective-cswiftswift2 swift3swift4swift5swift5.1swift5.2swift5.3swift5.4swift5.5swift5.6swift5.7swift5.8swift5.9swift6nextstep
Related tags for specific versions:
xcode3.2xcode4xcode4.2xcode4.3xcode4.5xcode4.6xcode5xcode5.1xcode6xcode6.1 xcode7xcode7.3xcode8xcode9xcode10xcode10.2xcode10.3xcode11xcode12xcode13xcode14xcode15xcode16xcode26
